Blowfish Page 17

  ‘Who’s us?’ she asked.

  ‘Your beautiful baby and me,’ I said.

  She stopped sobbing. She forced a smile on her face. ‘Tell me,’ she whispered. They had been married for two years now. It was an arranged thing. I liked Shweta. I thought Sampu was lucky to have someone like her.

  ‘He says you are the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He says he’s never been loved the way you have loved him; he loves the way you pamper him. He loves you madly Shweta, I know, I can see it in his eyes every time he talks about you. He thinks you are the prettiest girl he’s ever seen and that pregnancy has made you even prettier. He misses you when he’s in office.’

  ‘He used to miss me, now no more, he doesn’t.’

  ‘Shweta, he’s going through his own stuff you know, his father’s passing away has hit him hard and he misses the Shweta who used to pamper him all the time.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been going through so much too. Doing this is tough,’ she pointed to her baby bump, ‘I’m trying my best to support him. I’m trying but I feel tired all the time, I can’t sleep well and I get these mood swings. Sometimes I take it out on him.’

  ‘He understands that. I don’t think he feels bad about that. He feels you don’t trust him … that hurts him.’

  ‘Of course, I don’t! Look at this, he’s disappeared and I could have delivered our baby today.’

  ‘I’m saying he feels you think he doesn’t love the baby as much as you would like him to. He says he loves you and the baby a lot more than you think.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘He is lying.’

  ‘He doesn’t lie about you and the baby Shweta. He loves both of you a lot.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. He does, he does,’ she nodded and smiled. She seemed calmer now. I dropped her to her flat. I couldn’t muster the courage to go to Srijan Vihar. I was sure they would have called the police by now. Sampu’s Coke story had inspired me. I drove to a gas station and bought a Coke. I sat in the car, put on some music and opened the can.

  I felt a strange exhilaration. I got out of the car. The Sun was yet to rise, the wind blew cold and the clouds were dark. I yawned and stretched my arms. ‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ I said to myself, and pushed my hand deep into my pocket; my fingers fiddled with the car keys. This time I won’t give in that easy. I had given up my job, I had stopped going to the gym, I had stopped walking, I had abandoned the guitar class, and I didn’t even buy the bongos, but I had to pat myself for one thing—I hadn’t given up on writing. I was still at it. I had a feeling I was onto something. I felt fine.

  I parked the car in a bylane close to Srijan Vihar. I lay down on the back seat. I read Suman’s messages; I read my replies to her. I dozed off thinking of her.

  Bawaseer

  Chaddha didn’t know it yet but he was slowly freezing to death. He was wheezing out puffs of vapour, his feet were dipped in something squishy and his head was sticking to a newly painted wall. From the corner of his right eye he could see the Hindi letter B painted in big bold blue.

  He raised his head and saw an auto rickshaw roaring, he wondered what it was doing in his room and what the B stood for. He dozed off again. When he woke up, he heard the squeal of piglets passing by him. There was traffic on the road now. He propped himself on his feet. He checked his watch. It was 5 am. His back touched the wall. He turned to look at it and read the prophetic words through his half-open, dust caked eyes —

  Bawaseer ek teeke mein jad se khatm

  Hotel Bawa, Room 21, nikat purana bus stand

  He saw Sampu’s car parked nearby. Sampu was lying in the back seat. He seemed unconscious.

  Chaddha took out his phone. He saw my missed calls and read the messages.

  Sampu saw Chaddha pounding at the car windows and screaming. He asked, ‘Kya hua?’

  ‘Motherfucker, Shweta is in hospital.’

  Sampu woke up.

  Bona Fide Outlaw

  I woke up with a start. My phone was ringing. It was Chaddha.

  ‘Yes, Chaddha,’ I said.

  ‘Fucker, where are you?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Why the fuck should I tell you?’

  ‘Because they are looking for you. The police have come and noted their complaint. Did you really point my gun at the guard?’

  ‘Yes, I had no choice.’

  ‘The police are looking for you. They have asked me to go to the station and give a statement,’ he said.

  ‘Fuck!’ I said.

  ‘Harpal has lodged the FIR … I tried talking him out of it but the motherfucker would like to send you to Guantanamo bay if he could.’

  ‘Fuck,’ I said.

  ‘I’m trying to talk to Hoshiar. His phone is unreachable. He is in Jaipur, he’s coming back today, sometime by 11 am. I think he can help us.’

  ‘Fuck!’ I said.

  ‘Abe fuck, fuck karne se kuch nahin hoga! Just stay where you are. Let me see if I can do something.’

  The exhilaration I had felt a few hours back was all gone. I was a fucking fugitive. They might have placed a bounty on my head. I was shit scared. This was dreadful. I had found my purpose: it is called violent crime.

  I had run out of cigarettes. I stepped out of the car. I was expecting a hail of bullets. A crow cawed, a squirrel stared at me suspiciously. I walked down to a paan shop and asked for cigarettes. The paanwallah didn’t look up. That was luck. They might have put my name and photo in the papers. Suman would have expected an interpol alert.

  I checked my messages. There was a text from her.

  SUMAN: Why are you overthinking? You’re making the same mistake that I made. I got confused and I ran away. I realized I was wrong. If I was afraid of rejection, would I pursue you like this? If I was afraid of being judged, would I reach out to you?

  I could sense her exasperation. I smiled. She had made herself vulnerable and given me an earful at the same time. This Suman girl, she’s something.

  I replied, You’re right. I’m sorry. I have news. You’ll be happy to know that I’m living your dream. The police are looking for me. I’m on the run.

  SUMAN: Ignore my earlier message. Being your friend seems like a bad idea now. Why are the police looking for you?

  I replied, Pretty fancy stuff: threatening and intimidating a security guard with an air-gun.’

  SUMAN: Sorry, you’re not there yet. I would rank running over a traffic cop higher than this.

  I replied, Yes, you’re right. You are the smart one who got away. I didn’t. I slept in my car last night.

  SUMAN: Hmmm … why don’t you escape to Hong Kong? I can change my name to Mona and you can change yours to Lion. We’ll live happily ever after.’

  She soon sent another text, ‘Just kidding about the Lion and Mona darling bit, not hitting on you.’

  I cursed my luck. I had often hoped that she’ll come back to me, and now that she had, I was going to jail.

  We kept texting each other for a while, and then she had to go for a meeting.

  A few hours passed. The car was cold. I switched on the heater every ten minutes but it wasn’t helping much. I called Bumbum.

  ‘Namaste bhaiyya.’

  ‘Can you get me a blanket?’ I don’t know why but I was whispering.

  ‘What bhaiyya?’

  ‘A blanket … I have one on my bed, can you get it to me? I’m in a service lane close to the Hanuman Mandir.’

  ‘Bhaiyya, they won’t let me go out,’ he was whispering too.

  ‘What is happening there?’ I asked.

  ‘Chaddha bhaiyya is here. They are asking him to go to the police station but he’s staying put. He says he is waiting for Hoshiar uncle to come back. He talked to other people in the society to seek support but Harpal had got to them before he did. Everyone wants us out.’

  ‘Ok, and what else?’ I asked.

  ‘Lots of shouting … Har
pal is shouting at Chaddha bhaiyya and Chaddha bhaiyya is keeping mum.’

  ‘Really? Chaddha isn’t answering back?’ this was unlike him.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ok, you take care, don’t get into trouble.’

  ‘Ok bhaiyya … don’t worry bhaiyya.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said. I lit another cigarette and waited.

  It was afternoon. I dozed off. I woke up feeling like I was trapped in an iceberg. It was freezing in the car; I couldn’t get up the first time I tried. The car started after several attempts, the heater came on and made it bearable. After a while, I got out. Some hot tea would help, I thought. I went past the Hanuman temple. I’d seen it often but had never been inside. I thought I’d give it a shot. I took off my sandals and walked up the stairs.

  Hanuman ji was standing with the mountain on his upturned palm. I prayed ‘O Hanuman, give me the strength to get through this; O Hanuman, help me, help me.’ I sat down with my back to the temple wall and recited the chalisa. People say all troubles disappear if you recite the chalisa a hundred times. I began. I had got to the fifth recital when the phone started ringing.

  ‘Where are you?’ It was Sampu.

  ‘I’m here,’ I said.

  ‘Where is here you bastard? Why didn’t you come to my home?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like bothering Shweta and you.’

  ‘Fuck you! This is disgusting, if you thought I’m your friend you would have come. Where are you?’

  ‘At the Hanuman temple.’

  ‘Wait there; I’m coming to get you.’

  ‘It’s all right. I have a car. I’ll come to your place.’

  ‘No, they are watching the lane. They’ll spot your car. Just keep it where it is, I’ll come and get you.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Sampu was at the temple steps. I came down. He hugged me.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you yaar,’ he said.

  ‘Mention not ji, mention not,’ I said, ‘Is Shweta okay?’

  ‘Yes, she is fine. I would have found you earlier but I had to first apologise and then take her to the doctor. Surprisingly she was nice about it although I must admit, I lie pretty well,’ he grinned.

  ‘No, you don’t Sampu, you are a terrible liar.’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ he paused, ‘Has Shweta found out?’

  ‘Found out about what?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing … what are you doing in a temple?’ he asked.

  ‘I came to pray. I was looking for tea and I found God.’

  ‘God has heard your prayers. Come let’s go. Shweta is making lunch for you.’

  ‘Arre, why are you bothering with all this?’

  ‘Fuck, see, that’s what is disgusting about you. What’s your problem man? You have a police case filed against you because you were helping Shweta and me and now we can’t even fix you some food!’ he put his hand on my shoulder, ‘Mukund, we won’t let anything happen to you. We won’t let anything harm you. That poor chap Chaddha is standing at the society gate waiting for the society president to come back. A policewoman has slapped him twice. He has the worst hangover one can imagine and he has not eaten a morsel since morning. He’s so worried, I don’t think he’s even gone to the loo. With friends like that, do you think anything can happen to you?’

  I cried. I hugged him and cried some more. He patted me on the back. The sun was shining. It didn’t feel cold anymore.

  ‘A policewoman?’ I asked. I was hiding, crouched in the back of the car. We had reached the lane leading to our homes.

  ‘Yes, her name is Inspector Rani Devi. Chaddha says you know her. Chaddha was trying to act smart with her, you know how he is. She asked him your whereabouts and he said he didn’t know. He was being a cunt. She slapped him. Bumbum told me she slapped him once and then thought about it a bit before slapping him again. She’s looking for you now.’

  Principles of

  Natural Justice

  Brigadier Hoshiar returned late in the afternoon. A makeshift court was set up in the society office. Harpal was the prosecution, Chaddha was the defence lawyer and I was the undertrial in absentia. Chaddha called Sampu and Shweta as witnesses. He believed, and rightly so, that the validation of his story by a heavily pregnant woman would be enough to get the FIR withdrawn.

  Puran, Narender and the guards I had pointed the gun at sat at the back of the room, they were eager prosecution witnesses and their testimonies were damning. However, Chaddha cross-examined them with a melodramatic, partly fabricated version of the event that exaggerated my goodness, my mental illness and Shweta’s situation. He asked pointed questions that had nothing to do with the trial. It seems one of the guards told the court that he (Chaddha) was lying to which Chaddha responded by explaining to him the difference between an argument and a contradiction, ‘Sir, you are contradicting me, you’re not arguing. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition, while you assert the opposite of any statement that I make—and that sir is contradiction.’

  The guard, having not slept through the night, had dozed off by the time Chaddha finished. Chaddha used his legal knowhow to the fullest—he even mentioned Latin derived writs like habeas corpus, mandamus and quo warranto. Hoshiar didn’t know what these terms meant and thought Chaddha was outclassing Harpal’s plebeian prosecution that involved a copious amount of finger wagging and frequent usage of the word “behnchod”. In the midst of his cross-examination Chaddha would stop, smile at the Brigadier Hoshiar and shrug his shoulders indicating how the prosecutor was persona non-grata or some shit like that. One of the exchanges went like this:

  ‘Respected Brigadier Uncle, I must cite the principle of natural justice, I must protest this cruel treatment of my mentally unstable friend who, in his hallucinatory state, was only trying to help a heavily pregnant woman. Brigadier uncle, my dear friend helped her get to the hospital in time but Mr Harpal here is not willing to see this brave deed because he dislikes my client and he dislikes me—a clear bias that makes him ineligible to uphold the principles of natural justice.’ This was Chaddha’s “snake eating its tail” dialogue that began and concluded with “natural justice” and didn’t say much in the middle. He said this at least thrice during the proceedings.

  Pat came Harpal’s reply, ‘Sir, this behnchod is lying. He is not mental. This Chaddha says he is but he isn’t. That behnchod Mukundan is fine, he is normal and he has been lying to you from the very beginning. Just ask for doctor records Brigadier sahib, ask for them, I’m sure they don’t have any records for this behnchod.’

  ‘Saala jhoot bolta hain behnchod, maa chhod do bhechod ki,’ muttered Puran.

  ‘Brigadier Uncle, if only this were healthy criticism, I would be more than happy to accept the same, but there is no point talking to these people if all they can do is use abusive language and threaten us with dire consequences …’

  ‘Arre wah! Your Mukundan points gun at us and that’s okay and we can’t even say behnchod.’ Harpal protested.

  ‘Brigadier Uncle, it was an air gun. They had confiscated this gun during the pigeon-killing episode and had returned it only after proper inspection. They know the gun is harmless and still they have filed an FIR.’

  Hoshiar was too dazed from his trip to care too much. He bought it. At the end of the proceedings, Harpal whispered for a good five minutes in his ear but Hoshiar didn’t hear him, he just wanted to go home and take a nap. He asked for the medical records (he was now a little suspicious of the mental illness theory).

  Chaddha had no idea how to get it but Sampu, sitting at the back raised his hand and said, ‘Uncle, I have my friend’s medical records, will get them to you tomorrow’. Harpal was asked to withdraw the FIR. In return, he was awarded his tiny victory. Hoshiar told Chaddha to leave the house in a fortnight. We would be thrown out if I ever left the flat without Chaddha during this period. He later explained his stand to a visibly dejected defence lawyer, ‘Too much show-shaa has happened, we need to take action, pl
ease understand,’ he said wearily.

  The Prisoner

  Chaddha picked me up from Sampu’s house. I was brought home and I could sense them watching me as we entered the society. Harpal was there, I could see his walking stick through the car window. I didn’t feel like seeing his face. He whispered to me as I passed by, ‘Saved by that poofter again, eh?’

  I set foot in the house as if it was the first time. I was the first prisoner of this jail.

  We sat in Chaddha’s music room. He had put on 1942 A Love Story. Kumar Sanu pleaded in his rich baritone “kuch na kaho, kuch bhi na kaho,” Bumbum served three mugs brimming with beer. It was a cold day but Chaddha, Sampu and I agreed that chilled beer suited the occasion.

  ‘I don’t have any medical records. From where will we get it?’ I asked.

  ‘Ho jayega. I know a psychiatrist. He’s a good friend of mine. I’ll go home and borrow a few pages from his letterhead,’ Sampu said.

  ‘And he’ll give it to you?’

  ‘When I say borrow, I mean steal. He keeps it in his office. I can stuff a few pages in my pocket.’

  ‘Brilliant, now we’re into forgery,’ I shook my head.

  ‘It’s better than being on the road,’ Sampu said.

  ‘What if I have an interview? How will I step out then?’ I asked. It seemed unlikely, till now no one had evinced interest in hiring me.

  Chaddha sipped hungrily from his glass, ‘It’s just two weeks. If needed, we’ll tell them you need to go to the doctor.’

  ‘So much was happening here and I never got to know,’ Sampu shook his head in mock disbelief.

  ‘Yes, go ahead, make fun of it Sampu. You don’t have to vacate a house. I don’t know how I’ll pay the advance for a new one. The only money I have now is the money that doesn’t belong to me,’ I said. I felt like smoking, we had run out of cigarettes. I went to my drawer and took out a beedi packet.